1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates primarily to the field of concentrators, and in particular to a method and apparatuses for a wireless console/control concentrator.
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2. Background Art
In modern computing, devices like a group of computers share the same common resources or hardware devices in order to access the Internet, for example to browse the World Wide Web, to retrieve and send email, to chat, or to share a network, for example a Local Area Network/Wide Area Network (LAN/WAN). Some of these common resources include concentrators, routers, bridges, LAN/WAN connections, etc. A group of computers may also share other hardware devices like printers, facsimile machines, etc. In order to understand why devices and resources have to be shared, we have to first look at the changing nature of computing, and the implications thereof on layouts of computers in a shared environment like a computer lab, or business office.
Nature of Computing
The nature of computing is changing. Until recently, modem computing was mostly “machine-centric”, where a user accessed a dedicated computer at a single location. The dedicated computer had all the data and computer programs necessary for the user to operate the computer, and ideally, it had large amounts of hardware, such as disk drives, memory, processors, and the like. With the advent of computing networks, however, not only different computers but also different computer layouts have become more desirable and the focus of computing has become “service-oriented”. In particular computer networks allow a user to access data and computer programs that exist elsewhere in the network. When the user accesses such data or computer programs, the remote computer is said to be providing a service to the user. With the improvement in services and hardware devices available to users, the need to have a dedicated computer following the machine-centric paradigm is greatly reduced.
Console/Control Concentrator
A console/control concentrator is a hardware device that typically has many physical wire/fiber connections of the same type to devices within a very localized environment such as a computer rack or to those devices within a given short distance from the concentrator. It then relays data to and from these many localized hardwired devices (typically lower bandwidth, limited distance, and limited utilization) to typically (though not necessarily) a similar concentrator by multiplexing the data over a single (dual for redundancy) higher bandwidth line (typically connects to a LAN for greater distance). This allows installation and arrangement of many devices to be simplified by only having to make one or (two for redundancy) connections over a great distance instead of perhaps hundreds. Protocol conversion and routing can take place within a concentrator to allow for the multiplexing.
Present devices such as computers operating under various operating systems, and various communication protocols are hard-wired to a console/control concentrator. This is illustrated in FIG. 1, where various devices (device console ports 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105) are hard-wired to concentrator 106. Concentrator 106 is hard-wired to concentrator 107. Node 107 could be a network terminal server instead of another concentrator. Concentrator 107 is hard-wired to computer display consoles 108, 109, 110, 111. The connected ring shaped configuration is for illustration purposes only, and one skilled in the art will realize that the configuration can take any symmetric or non-symmetric shape depending upon the layout of the various devices in a room. Generally, for a room full of devices that use a concentrator to forward data to and from shared devices and resources, the devices are mounted on a rack, and there is one concentrator per rack or one per many such devices.
Computer Layout
Since several computers share the same resources or devices, they do not have to be close to each other, or to the shared devices, especially if they are hard-wired to each other. But, there may be a tangled maze of wires to and from these shared devices to the computers. For example, several computers from different parts of an office may be wired to a single common printer residing in one location of the office. Certain other wire connections are unavoidable, for example, the power cord from each device to the power outlet, or the console (monitor) connection to the computer tower. The present inventor has shown how these wire connections may be organized to a certain extent; especially for a room full of devices stacked one on top of another in rows of racks. A complete description of organizing and operating wires for rack systems are contained in co-pending U.S. patent application “Method and Apparatus For Efficient Electronics Positioning And Connection Systems”, Ser. No. 09/784, 470, filed on Feb. 15, 2001, and assigned to the assignee of this patent application.
Prior Art Limitations
Existing console/control concentrators have a limited number of physical connections which; to a certain extent, is dictated by the size of the physical connector used, and the room needed to facilitate plugging and unplugging the physical connectors. This necessitates using many more concentrators thereby increasing the size and complexity of the job of wiring, configuring, documenting, labeling, and maintaining these many connections. Given the nature of console/control traffic, the vast majority of these connections will sit idle at any given time, meaning this hardware is for the most part underutilized.
The control ports of existing devices are usually either serial or Ethernet. Some devices have both types of access available. There are at least four different style connectors for serial and three different styles for Ethernet excluding fiber. These differences mean you will have to use adapters to compensate for the differences. Regardless, concentrators cannot work for both serial and Ethernet. They must be made for one or the other.
With current prior art there is a need to document each line with an ID tag on both ends as well as the need to document the layout of these wire connections in a network diagram. This documentation is updated manually in a documentation database as well as in an online configuration database. Because this process is manual and not automatic there is a great chance that the database will fall out of date with the actual configuration. This database could hold at a minimum the concentrator and device hostnames and the concentrator and device locations. Also, with prior art there is no means by which a computer room layout could be made self-documenting.